Manufacturing operations very frequently involve assembly of a number of components into a finished product unit. It is highly advantageous from an economic standpoint to automate as many as possible of these assembly operations and, in particular, it is advantageous to provide apparatus and mechanisms that enable mechanized delivery or assembly of components or subcomponents of an assembly at least to the extent of providing those components at a work station where personnel may manually effect the assembly. Even more advantageously, it is desirable that automated mechanisms including robotics may effect the assembly once provided with the component and effect the placement of that component in association with either a subassembly or major component of a product unit.
Packaging systems designed to meet this general objective have been heretofore designed and utilized. These packaging systems generally comprise elongated flexible tapes of strip-form that are readily rolled or folded into compact packages for both economy of storage space and also minimizing transport costs. A previously patented example of a packaging system of this type is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,583,641 granted Apr. 22, 1986 to John R. Gelzer, the named inventor in this application. That prior art packaging system consisted of an elongated carrier tape to which a secondary or packaging tape was removably secured and the two tapes cooperatively retained articles in loop-form assemblies. The packaging tape was mechanically interconnected to the carrier tape by means which enabled the two to be readily separated at the assembly or utilization point and thereby release the article or component previously retained with the packaging system. Such a packaging system as shown in this identified patent required that the two tapes be mechanically joined while concurrently receiving the articles to be packaged. At the point of utilization of the articles, the two tapes were mechanically separated and if desired, the tapes could either be reused by returning them to the source of supply for the articles and reassembled in packaging of additional articles. Alternatively, they could be simply shredded and the material then disposed of or recycled through remanufacture into new tapes for subsequent use in packaging of other articles for storage and transport to the utilization station.